At the back of their pictures: Brothers Dardenne ethical realism

With The Promise (La promesse, 1996), their third feature film, the turning point in their work and the paradigmatic film of their future career, the brothers Dardenne find their way in the minimalistic hyperrealism and social and moral drama, exploring social and socially related moral instabilities related to contemporary social and economic circumstances and the postion of an individual living in them. For them, realism is first of all an ethical position from which to observe the world, a technical and artistic expression of their moral standpoints.